Online or “cloud” storage is a popular and easy way for computer users to store electronic media without the need to physically connect to a storage device. For example, it is common for a user to capture digital photographs and videos on a smart phone, and to store the captured media items in the “cloud.” Furthermore, users frequently utilize online storage for storing more than digital photographs and videos. For instance, users often utilize online storage to save electronic document files (e.g., word processor files, spreadsheet files, and/or other electronic files).
In addition to saving digital photos, digital videos, and electronic document files to online storage, in many cases a user wishes to save physical documents (e.g., paper receipts, invoices, pay stubs, bills, reports, and so forth) to online storage. Unlike digital photographs, videos, and other electronic files that are in a digital format, in order to eventually save a physical document to online storage, the physical document must first be digitized (i.e., changed from a physical object to digital data. Conventional systems have several disadvantages when attempting to digitize a physical document to save on an online storage system.
One disadvantage is that conventional systems often need multiple steps and various hardware devices. To illustrate, in some conventional systems, a user utilizes a flatbed scanner to digitize a physical document. Conventional systems that use a flatbed scanner have several disadvantages. First, in utilizing a flatbed scanner, the user often must store physical documents until being able to access a flatbed scanner (e.g., at an office). Furthermore, the user has to scan the physical documents, save the scanned document to the user's local computer device, and then upload the scanned document to online storage. The flatbed process of scanning, saving, and uploading documents is frustrating for users.
Due to the disadvantages of using a flatbed scanner, some users take a digital photo of a physical document they wish to store digitally, and upload the digital photo to online storage. Various problems exist, however, with this conventional approach to storing physical documents. For example, a digital photo in a picture file format (e.g., JPEG, GIF) is typically a much larger data file compared to file formats for electronic documents. Thus, physical documents that are digitized in a picture file format use excessive storage resources that can result in limited available storage space. Moreover, because larger data files take longer to download from an online storage system, storing physical documents in a picture file format typically results in longer file access times (e.g., the amount of time for a client device to access a file on the online storage). In addition, picture file formats are often not compatible with document applications within which the physical document is intended to be used, such as accounting applications, electronic document applications, and so forth.
While some conventional systems are able to convert a digital photo to a document file format, traditional file converters use significant amounts of processor resources to make the conversion. Due to the significant use of processor resources, many file converters need more processor power than is available on a typical mobile device. Due to the processor, intensive process of converting a digital photo in a picture file format to a document file format, a user must first download a digital photo of the physical document to a non-mobile computing device (e.g., desktop or laptop computer) that has adequate processor power. Thus, conventional file conversion systems often require significant processing resources not available on many mobile devices.
As another disadvantage, conventional systems that save a digital photo of a physical document often result in poor quality representation of the physical document. For example, when taking a photo of a physical document with a mobile phone camera, a user often holds the camera at an angle with respect to the physical document. Thus, the document in the resulting photo appears skewed. In addition, with conventional systems, the user may hold the camera too close to the physical document or too far away from the physical document, which may result in not capturing portions of a physical document, or capturing portions of a physical document that are unreadable.
Furthermore, conventional systems are unable to provide a user with any visual guidance to capture a physical document because most digital cameras (e.g., on mobile devices) generate a viewfinder image feed having a frame rate that is much too fast for conventional systems to usefully recognize a physical document within the image feed. Specifically, conventional systems require significant processor time and resources to detect an object within an image. Accordingly, by the time a conventional system may be able to detect a physical document within a frame of a viewfinder image feed, the viewfinder image feed is displaying a much different frame (e.g., 20 or more frames after the display of the analyzed frame). Therefore, due to the complexity and processor intensive object detection process of conventional systems, any document detection on a frame within a viewfinder image feed is irrelevant and not useful with respect to a currently displayed image frame within the viewfinder image feed.